


Where the Night Goes

by little_brisk



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Bondage, F/F, F/M, Joyful sex, Kinktober 2020, Multi, Restraints, The Porn Is the Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27401782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_brisk/pseuds/little_brisk
Summary: They'd taken their time, tying that man to that chair.
Relationships: Beverly Crusher/William Riker/Deanna Troi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	Where the Night Goes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allamaraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allamaraine/gifts).



‘I think he looks pretty good,’ Beverly stage-whispered, coming up behind Deanna and resting her arms across her shoulders, lingering to gaze with her upon their handiwork. ‘Don’t you?’

Deanna laughed, leaning back against her. ‘Yeah, I’d say so,’ she said. She craned around for a kiss, and Beverly caught her jaw, a little roughly, with one hand and tugged her hair to tip her head back with the other, and grinned when Deanna moaned against her mouth.

‘You’re killing me,’ Will objected, gamely enough for someone who was stark naked and lashed to a desk chair, and Deanna’s moan became a laugh again.

Beverly thumbed her cheek, delighting in her, and kissed her again, grin to grin, before turning back to Will, bound there in the chair at the foot of her bed.

‘You do look, I mean, like, really, really good,’ she said, laughing still but fully in earnest, biting her lip and pulling Deanna tight against her. It’d be time to plot her next move shortly, but for now it was enough, so much more than enough, to hold Deanna close and get a good long look at Will, flushed and vulnerable in his restraints and grinning like a fool.

They’d taken their time, tying that man to that chair. It had begun as a joke—a refrain between her and Deanna about how he couldn’t sit still when they were both in the room—but then Beverly had seen how his eyes had quite sincerely lit up at the idea of the challenge, and she’d looked at Deanna and thought, _What if…?_ , and watched her own flush spread across Deanna’s chest, and that had been, more or less, that.

And it had been so easy. It was always so easy. Every fear that arose in Beverly that her next step with Deanna and Will would find her coming up against a wall, that something in her would exceed what they were willing to accept, what they could hold, what they would want, every fear abated so easily in their arms, their laughter, the incontestable sincerity of their enjoyment of her. When she’d sat Will down in that chair and handed a neat stack of leather bands to Deanna, crouching beside her, it had been no different than any other intimate moment between the three of them: the ease in his posture despite his evident arousal, the unguarded simple trust in the way he took her hand in his to kiss it before allowing Deanna to take him by the hand in turn; watching Deanna kiss him and then smile back at her, full of promise; watching Deanna bind him, almost as tightly as he wanted. His arms straight down at his sides, lashed to the back posts of the chair at bicep and forearm and wrist; his legs parted, strapped shin and ankle to the chair’s front legs; the wide band across his chest more for show and sensation than practical restraint. The great bulk of him restrained so robustly to such a flimsy bit of furniture was so compelling in its absurd way: such an obviously voluntary bondage.

It had been so easy, so comfortable, like they’d done it a hundred times before, but now, stepping back, holding Deanna close and teasing Will about how good he looked, it caught up with Beverly how new it really was, how none of them really knew quite exactly what would happen, and she shuddered with the thrill of it.

And Will might have entered into his restraints with ease and grace, but now he was drawn as taut as the straps that bound him: his breath rough and shallow, the hair on his chest glistening with sweat, the parting of his legs somehow suggestive despite the frankness of the pose, somehow coy despite the strain of his muscles and the needy look of his cock, hard with anticipation and thwarted desire. Just their watching him, standing there together, just watching, had a visible effect, and his flush and clench and rattling sigh drew them taut too, and all three of them were caught together in the tension of the newness of this thing.

‘Jesus,’ Will laughed, as though startled at his own nerves. His hands flexed at his sides. He usually rubbed his beard when he was anxious, or scratched the back of his head, and now he couldn’t even do that. He could only sit, and watch, totally exposed, totally vulnerable. And Beverly could only trust that it was as much a thrill for him as it seemed to be. And as it was for her.

‘Shall we undress you?’ she murmured, finally, in Deanna’s ear, trying not to sound too desperate, but the choking sound Will made at the proposal made her gasp and clutch Deanna’s hip despite herself.

‘Please,’ Deanna sighed, leaning back against her, color high and breath shallow.

‘What she said,’ rasped Will, testing his restraints, rolling his shoulders and shaking his head, comically like a prizefighter before a bout.

Deanna gasped and clutched Beverly’s hand to her lips. ‘Please,’ she repeated, more urgently, grazing the knuckles with her teeth.

They were all, perhaps, a little overwhelmed.

‘Easy,’ Beverly said gently, for her own benefit as much as theirs, holding Deanna tight with one arm around her waist and the other pressed across her chest, the kind of firm hold that made her relax, made her breath come easier, made it possible for her to begin to let go. ‘There you are,’ she murmured, feeling the easing of Deanna’s tension as a fresh wave of confidence in herself. And sensing that in turn, Deanna sighed in a great rushing exhale, loose and heavy in her arms, and then Will did, too, and Beverly smiled. ‘Yes, there you are,’ she breathed, and pressed rewarding kisses to the sweet spot behind Deanna’s ear.

‘Beverly,’ Deanna sighed, a simpler kind of plea.

‘Yes,’ said Beverly, kissing Deanna’s temple, with a coy smile for Will as she ran her hands over her bare shoulders, down her back, to find the catch above the zipper of her jumpsuit.

‘Oh, god,’ Will moaned, with a tell-tale creak of the chair’s joints, before she had even begun, and Deanna laughed a low, self-satisfied laugh, wriggling happily in her arms. She wondered what he was receiving from Deanna—or maybe it really was that good, just to imagine her hands at work on the fussy mechanisms, to watch her do a thing he’d done a hundred times, or to see the way Deanna reclined against her, the way she gasped and swayed in response to the slightest brush of Beverly’s cold fingers against her overheated back.

‘Do you have any idea what you look like together?’ he asked admiringly, all the anxious urgency gone out of him, so absorbed was he in watching them.

Beverly had a very good idea: Deanna, as it had turned out, liked mirrors almost as much as she did. And Will’s devouring eyes were as fine a reflection as either of them could possibly wish for.

There was a kind of magic in that triangulation of desire, in how Will’s gaze refracted Beverly’s consciousness of Deanna’s body and her own and amplified it, expanded it, returned it to her transformed somehow. As she tugged Deanna’s zipper down and followed it with a firm caress along her spine, pressed her lips against her shoulder, let her teeth graze her sweet smooth skin, Beverly let a flare of want course through her, let herself sink deep into the pleasure of spreading her hands across Deanna’s hips under the fabric, to let Deanna feel it too, feel it from the inside of her all the way to the ends of her fingertips, gliding them up her ribcage, coasting her breasts and pulling back again to push the suit down off her shoulders, down the length of her arms, to hang around her waist and bare her to Beverly’s touch and Will’s enraptured eyes.

Deanna shivered: the chill of the air, or the thrill of exposure? ‘Beverly,’ she breathed, an unformed plea, and Beverly wrapped her arms around her to hold her close again, to keep her warm and let her know she’d hold her up, and to luxuriate, for a moment, in the blessing of a lover to whom her undisguised desire was in itself a gift.

‘Good?’ Beverly asked after a moment.

‘Yes,’ Deanna sighed, easy in her arms.

‘Good.’ Beverly kissed her shoulder and knelt to pull her jumpsuit the rest of the way down, helping her out of it, first one foot, then the other, and lingered to kiss the outside of her thigh, her hip, the curve and slope of her ass.

‘What about these?’ Beverly asked, tugging suggestively on the band of Deanna’s knickers. Deanna smiled down at her, stroking a hand appreciatively through her hair. She knew the question was not for her.

‘Leave them,’ Will said, a deep desiring growl, with a grin that anticipated Deanna’s smug little laugh.

Beverly stood, with some considerable effort—there was a pleasure in kneeling at Deanna’s feet, looking up at her wide, adoring eyes, that was hard to pull herself away from. But standing behind her, in full uniform while she was so exposed, putting on this little show for Will, was its own order of pleasure.

‘I want to touch you now,’ she breathed, not half as authoritatively as she’d planned.

Deanna turned slightly in her arms, tipped her head back, looked up at her with beseeching eyes. ‘Kiss me first,’ she pleaded, soft and submissive and utterly undeniable.

‘Yes,’ Beverly whispered against her lips, kissing without thinking, half lost in the sweetness of it, of Deanna’s mouth, Deanna naked and wanting in her arms, Deanna’s hand on her cheek, in her hair. ‘Deanna,’ she breathed, and slipped her hand down under her knickers, soft, easy, and moaned gratefully into her hair.

She had worried, when they’d first started doing this, that between her own inveterate toppiness and Will’s, they’d somehow smother Deanna—but what a ridiculous idea that seemed now, feeling Deanna come alive under her hands, under Will’s gaze, feeling how she loved to be treasured this way, the glow their admiration filled her with, how she seemed to come fully into herself through their desire.

Absorbed in Deanna, in the weight of her in her arms, the way she moved, how she responded with breath and voice and every muscle to every movement of Beverly’s hand, her honey-sweet scent and the tang of her sweat, Beverly did spare a thought for Will, which was that she would not for the wide world trade places with him. To see Deanna like this and not feel her too, to watch and be forbidden to touch, or even touch herself, seemed a form of unimaginable torture.

’Oh, Dee,’ she sighed, almost in spite of herself, and Deanna sighed too, and arched her back like a cat in a sunbeam, delicious, perfect. ‘Can you come like this?’

Will barked a laugh that snapped her attention back to him, shifting restlessly in his restraints. ‘Have you met her?’ he said, grinning broadly. He had a point.

Deanna was laughing too, biting her lip and nodding and squirming luxuriously deeper into Beverly’s embrace. ‘Yeah, I— _oh_ —yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be much trouble, Beverly.’

‘All right, then,’ Beverly grinned, ‘wanna see how fast we can get you there?’

Deanna whined and nodded frantically, clutching at Beverly’s hip, at Beverly’s arm around her waist; Will drew a hissing breath and flexed his arms in frustration; and Beverly felt a joy as bright and hot as liquid gold welling up inside her til she thought that she might burst.

‘Oh, I am the luckiest woman in the world,’ she sighed.

And it really wasn’t any trouble at all: Deanna hot and ready under her hand, giving herself over as easily as she ever did, gasping and arching, reaching back to clasp her hands around Beverly’s neck, a pose as artful as if she were a dancer in a sculpture—and always the intense consciousness of being watched, the experience of her beauty redoubled through Will’s eyes. Then just like that, all in a sudden sweet rush, Deanna coming in her arms. Beautiful, easy, perfect.

And she was laughing as she came, and laughing, she turned and laced her arms around Beverly's neck and kissed her til she swayed on her feet.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, tracing her lips with her fingertips.

‘Any time, gorgeous,’ Beverly laughed, exaggerating her struggle to keep her balance, and Deanna laughed too, her wide dopamine-addled grin crinkling her eyes with mischievous delight. She knew exactly what she was, exactly what effect she had, and it was beautiful to see, how easily she inhabited herself, standing there exposed, vulnerable, just luxuriating in Beverly’s frank adoration. ‘Any time at all,’ Beverly repeated, and it came out hoarse and solemn as a confession. Deanna stood a moment longer holding her gaze, stroked one hand across her cheek in a tender sort of gesture that seemed to acknowledge Beverly’s sudden intensity of feeling, before grinning again, pulling back.

‘Time to get that uniform off you, don’t you think?’ she said, with a condescending little pat on Beverly’s cheek and, to soften it and bring her back down onto solid ground, a delighted giggle cast over her shoulder in Will’s direction. He just shook his head, daftly fond.

‘Yeah,’ Beverly agreed, catching her hand and kissing it. ‘Go take care of him, I’ll get out of all this.’

Deanna hopped up on the bed, kneeling behind Will’s chair so that she could lean over him, lean on him, look back at Beverly with him.

‘You don’t want to sit in my lap?’ Will asked, tipping his head back, mock-petulant but plainly deeply wanting.

Deanna gave his beard a condescending stroke, and he shivered, shuddered, and no wonder—he must have been starved for contact, desperate for any touch. ‘I think she has other plans, Imzadi,’ Deanna murmured suggestively, but she bent down, leaned over him, raked her hands down across his chest, and captured his mouth with hers in a kiss that he leaned into like his life depended on it.

Beverly leaned back against her bureau to catch her breath and watch them for a moment, just to enjoy them, enjoy permission to watch and her own easy captivation by them. That was how they’d started, the three of them, not so long ago: with Deanna noticing how Beverly responded to how she and Will were with each other. And watching them now, the memory was so vivid: lounging as they so often did together on Deanna’s couch, how Deanna had responded to some joke of Will’s with a playful kiss to shut him up, how ordinary it had been, like any other evening. And then quite suddenly how something had taken a sharp turn, how something in Beverly had dropped like a hot leaden weight, watching Deanna’s mouth meet Will’s, with Deanna’s hand still resting warm on hers. And how Deanna had turned back to her, startled, and squeezed her fingertips with a curious smile to answer Beverly’s self-conscious one. What it had felt like to watch understanding dawn on Will’s face, too. Then Deanna’s mouth sudden and soft; Will’s hand falling heavy on the back of her neck. How inevitable it had felt; how sweet; how right. And still, now, how sweet and right, to watch them, to get to enjoy them as them and not feel excluded.

Snapping out of her reverie, she took advantage of their distraction to obey Deanna’s directive: kick her boots off, hop out of her socks, skin half out of her uniform, get stuck in it, get unstuck, hop and stumble and swear under her breath and generally get all the undignified bits of undressing herself over with before they looked back at her and noticed her standing there in her underwear. When they did, she flashed a grin and crossed her arms across her body and whipped her tank off in exactly the kind of bold, sexy gesture you’d actually want your lovers to see. Deanna spread her hands with a disbelieving smile, and Will just laughed ruefully and bowed his head as though in abject surrender.

Laughing, thrilled with them and their delight in her, she sketched a series of goofy pin-up poses—tousling her hair, cocking her hip, turning to pout at them over her shoulder, performing one of the neat burlesque tricks she took such pride in, folding at the waist to tug down her plain grey Starfleet-issue briefs like they were the finest lace anyone had ever strip-teased out of. Will whistled, Deanna hooted; she loved them for it. Straightening and turning back to them, flushed with her own delight in herself, it was easy to fall into a more natural kind of movement, a roll of hip and shoulder that was more honestly, if still half-jokingly, seductive.

‘Hooooly shit,’ laughed Will, at the same time as Deanna blurted, ‘Fuck’s sake, Bev!’, collapsing against him, as he tipped his head back with a growl of profound frustration.

‘How you doing, Will?’ Beverly teased, rolling her hips, taking a step toward them and then back again, turning her back to them and lifting her hair and offering a campy little shimmy just to be sure no one could possibly remain under the impression that _over the top_ was off limits here.

‘I’m— _fuck_!’ Will laughed, taking a shuddering breath, and when Beverly turned back again she fell right out of her rhythm, so delicious was the sight of him in his extremity of frustrated arousal.

‘Think he might be into you,’ Deanna said, grinning her enormous unbelievable grin.

‘Little bit, yeah,’ Will said, beet-red, still laughing, shaking his head the way he tended to when Beverly, specifically, overwhelmed him. Sweet, boyish, helpless, and so disarming.

‘One day I’m gonna dance for you for real,’ Beverly promised, or threatened, stepping up close to them again. ‘And then you’re gonna be in serious trouble.’ She bent without preamble to take Will’s mouth in a rough, uncareful kiss, and straightening again pulled Deanna in for one, too. Before either of them could recover, she swung a leg across Will’s lap and stood straddling the chair, bringing her little performance to an abrupt halt, stopped dead with one hand fisted in his hair and his mouth a hairsbreadth from her sternum. Her other hand rested with Deanna’s on his shoulder; she thumbed her knuckles very softly as she tightened her demanding grip on him.

‘Shit,’ he gasped, as she loosened her hold just a little, just enough. ‘ _Beverly_.’ She laughed, but she was breathless, too.

‘Go on,’ she said, knowing what he wanted.

Panting, he mouthed clumsily at the underside of her breast—Deanna’s grip on her hand tightened viciously—and she stroked his hair to soothe him. And to steady herself, if she was being honest. This close, the smell of sweat and leather was like a drug, and with his mouth needy and hot closing around her nipple, his beard rough against her skin, with Deanna watching hungrily with that bewitching look she got when she was full up to the brim with what she felt from and for them both, Beverly nearly swooned.

As though overwhelmed himself, Will pulled back, took a deep breath, and having kissed each of her breasts very tenderly once more, rested his head against her sternum, breathing heavily.

‘Okay?’ she asked, still stroking his hair.

‘Oh, god, yeah,’ he said, turning to lay his hot temple against her cooler skin. ‘This is just…’ He swallowed, tried again: ‘And you’re…’ He gave up, sighing, resting against her.

‘What would feel good?’ she asked softly, looking up at Deanna, finding confidence in her nod, her smile. He raised his head again, looked up at her with inarticulate need. ‘You want my mouth?’ she prompted, and Deanna’s helpless whimper almost took her out at the knees.

‘Jesus, Beverly,’ Will groaned, with a jerk against his restraints that seemed entirely involuntary.

‘Anything you like,’ she said, ‘you just have to ask.’ When he growled at that, she grinned, thumbing his mouth just exactly as roughly as she knew he liked it. His eyes fluttered closed and he struggled for a breath, and she knew she had him where she wanted him, but she looked again to Deanna, just to be sure. Deanna gave a sweet smile that was her confidence in him, but the way she nodded, with a heavy, loving wonder in her eyes—that was entirely for Beverly, and it filled her top to toe with a feeling for which she had no easy name.

‘I want,’ Will managed, licking his lips, and she stroked his cheek to encourage him. ‘I want you to—just take me, Beverly, just take me.’ He knew what it would do to her to hear him say that, but he also, plainly, meant it, and meant it desperately.

‘Yeah?’ she teased, a little breathlessly. ‘You want me to ride that gorgeous cock of yours?’ And she laughed as he gasped, his eyes screwed shut, nodding helplessly, she laughed with the sheer giddy joy of his desire. And her own. ‘Good,’ she said, and looked once more to Deanna.

‘Are you kidding?’ Deanna breathed. She knew just how right it felt for him, and she wanted it, too, just as badly.

‘Then I think that can be arranged,’ Beverly sighed, not minding how badly she betrayed herself. She wanted him; she wanted them; she wanted them always, always to know it. ‘That can certainly be arranged.’ And she eased herself into his lap, pressed close against him, sighing with him at the rushing relief of longed-for contact, her arms wrapped around him and her thighs resting on his thighs and her belly brushing against his belly, her breasts against the soft sweat-beaded hair of his chest, rolling her hips against his cock trapped between them, rock-hard against her clit.

‘God, this feels so good,’ she murmured, rolling her hips and winding her hands in his hair and kissing him, kissing him, ‘you feel so good.’ He moaned into her mouth; she replied in kind. It really was just simply so good.

Moving against him, kissing him, enjoying him, she was struck by the thought that this was still only the beginning, that the whole evening still stretched ahead of them. She’d fuck him like this now; they’d come together, with Deanna holding on to them; and then there’d be so much more still to look forward to. How Deanna would want more, lots more, and they would give it to her, together, his mouth and her hand or the other way round, or maybe they’d lie the way they often did with her between them, fucking her together, his cock and her hand and Deanna, Deanna, ecstatic in their arms; how Beverly would come again against Deanna’s ass—she always did—and it would reverberate through Deanna, mind and body, and send her over, too, then Will, overtaken by both of them, a great three-part crescendo of an orgasm that would see them all collapse together in an incoherent clutch of tangled limbs, unable and unwilling to let go. It was so good, she thought, to know they had all night; so good to know how they could be, together.

Now, there was Will’s immediate intensity of need to tend to, and her own, and Deanna, holding on to both of them. She rolled her hips against him and moaned a mad animal keen of a moan, wild with the freedom of adoring them.

‘I do want you,’ she growled against Will’s ear, kissing him clumsily as she wrapped her hand around his cock, thumbing the head of it, ‘I really do.’ And as she lifted her hips and guided him inside her, sinking down slowly into the exquisite heavy pressure of it, raising her eyes to meet Deanna’s heavy-lidded gaze, she leaned in close and whispered: ‘Don’t you come, now,’ and he and Deanna moaned together. A little drunk on power, she dragged her teeth along the outside edge of his ear, just because she could. ‘Not till I do,’ she added, and he whimpered pitifully. ‘And I want to make this last. Can you do that for me?’

‘Oh, he can,’ Deanna assured her, with a low, delicious chuckle, scraping her nails down over his chest as his eyes fluttered closed and all his muscles tensed against their restraints, and Beverly’s hips came flush with his, taking him to the hilt, and he gave a long, low moan.

‘Mm hmm… _mmngh_ ,’ Beverly agreed, unable to maintain any pretense with him filling her like that, deep and thick and aching hot. ‘But I want,’ she managed, running her hand through his hair, getting a good grip and tugging so that he locked his eyes on hers, ‘to hear that from him.’

‘Fuck,’ he panted. ‘ _Yes_. Oh, my fucking—Beverly, yes, fuck.’

She laughed. ‘That’ll do,’ she said, and she began to move.

‘This what you wanted?’ he gasped against her neck, trying to tease but so ragged, so needy.

‘Yes,’ she breathed, like a reward, kissing him bruisingly, ‘so good, Will, you’re doing so well and you feel—oh, god, you feel so good.’

His restraints deprived her too, in some ways—of his broad hands on her ass, for a start, holding her, moving with her, or the encouraging smack of his open palm; of the thought that he might at any moment make a bid to turn the tables, stand and lift her bodily and throw her down onto the bed, the floor, or up against a wall.

But the gifts were so many. Total control was only one. The creak and sway of the chair under their combined weight; how his strain against his restraints brought out the outlines of his musculature and how it marked his skin, how she could picture the places where he’d bruise just beautifully; the way he whimpered, high and almost pitiful, at what he couldn’t do, what he could only beg of her. Deanna behind him, stroking his shoulders, reaching with her reassuring touch to cup Beverly’s face, to urge her on, like they were taking him together. And through it all, that heavy, heady smell of leather.

He compensated for his restricted movement with the one part of him that was free: his mouth. Kissing, licking, biting, ravaging her throat, her mouth, her shoulders, anywhere he could reach, thrillingly rough but a far cry from the challenging kisses she was used to; not the usual way he met her assertiveness with his own, but like he was desperate for her, like he wanted to devour her but could only beg for her to let him.

‘So good,’ she kept saying, moving in his lap, reaching for Deanna, ‘so good, you’re—’ But he stopped her mouth with his, and that was the end of speech for her.

She made a show of winding her hand down between their bodies, to get her fingers on her clit, just a little extra pressure, a little extra friction, and Will grunted like she’d punched him, staring down at her hand moving between them.

‘Will,’ she whimpered without entirely meaning to, and felt Deanna’s hand clench in her hair. ‘ _Deanna_ ,’ she whined, and at that Will made a pitiful choked sobbing noise into the crook of her neck and jerked his hips so hard it would have toppled them right over if not for Deanna’s bracing hold. The tense satisfaction of him spilling into her, the throb of his cock and his desperate voice against her throat filled her with a need so urgent she thought it might break her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Will panted, ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t—’

‘Perfect,’ Beverly assured him, clutching him, frantic, every muscle burning as she reached and reached, ‘Will, it was perfect, you’re perfect, I love it when you—oh, fuck, when you come inside me, fuck, _fuck_ , I want—I want to—’, half panicking as she felt it just out of her grasp, til Deanna tugged her hair and caught her in a messy, needy kiss that begged as vividly as any spoken plea and reached the tight-coiled desperate thing inside her and broke it open, and she came gracelessly, whining into Deanna’s mouth and clutching Will’s hair with one hand and her own cunt with the other, a clumsy, thoughtless convulsion of a climax, til she collapsed down onto him, entirely undone.

‘Dee,’ she breathed, all she could manage, and somehow Deanna knew what she meant. She stood and circled round them, stroked one hand very gently through Beverly’s hair, across her shoulders, laid a sweet lingering kiss on the crown of her head, and bent with efficient care to the task of unbuckling Will’s bindings. With weak and awkward hands Beverly set to work on the fastening of the chest strap, and as she dropped it to the floor he gasped like a man half-drowned.

Deanna freed first one arm, then the other, and, groaning and sighing with the stiffness of his muscles, he wrapped them round Beverly as soon as they were his again to do with as he pleased. When Deanna had unbound his legs she kissed them both once more and then retired discreetly, on the excuse of tidying away the straps, to give them a moment to recover alone together.

‘It’s so good to hold you,’ Will whispered, tightening his arms around her. ‘It’s so good to hold you.’

‘You all right?’ Beverly asked, some dim part of her alarmed by that great breath he’d taken when she’d loosened the chest strap.

‘Hah, _all right_ doesn’t really cover it,’ he said hoarsely, pulling back to look at her, stroking her face, her shoulders, her sides, like he was trying to make up for all the ways he hadn’t touched her til now.

‘Nothing numb? No pain?’ She found herself blushing and tried to gesture it away. ‘I mean, beyond, you know…’

He laughed. ‘You’re off duty, Doc,’ he admonished her, with a kiss for emphasis. ‘Promise I’d say if anything felt wrong.’

‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Gonna stand up now.’

‘You sure about that?’ he teased, and they laughed together.

‘You’re the one who was tied up for an hour,’ Deanna taunted him, leaning in the doorway gazing fondly at them, naked and perfect. She’d dispensed with her knickers and let her hair down, binding it in the loose plait she wore for bed, and with her face washed clean, her eyes were even more extraordinary, her plain sleepy smile so familiar, so inviting. Beverly rested her head against Will’s, still breathing hard, just staring at her in dazed, dumb admiration. She laughed at them and hopped into Beverly’s bed with a silly pout that didn’t at all spoil the effect of her. ‘Clean yourselves up and get in here,’ she demanded. ‘I’m freezing!’ And she was, visibly. But the gooseflesh on her shoulders was so lovely in its way…

‘Okay!’ Beverly said, shaking off her entrancement and turning her attention back to Will. ‘Okay, we can do this.’ And in a groaning stumble they both made it to their feet without falling down again, laughing and leaning on each other.

And when they tumbled into bed, and Beverly laid herself down alongside Deanna, holding her close, taking very seriously the business of keeping her warm, and Will just fell right down between Deanna’s legs, curling himself up and resting his head on her thigh, his arm draped along Beverly’s leg hooked over Deanna’s, and they all three sighed together—

‘I really am the luckiest woman in the world,’ she said, and Deanna pulled her close to kiss her, and Will’s hand lay heavy on her hip. How sweet it felt; how right.

And they still had the whole night ahead of them, and all its many possibilities.


End file.
